DDO – One month in

So I dropped all of my other subscriptions for now and have just been playing DDO for a bit. I even ended up subscribing just so I could get access to all of the content – which you don’t get if you’re just doing the “Free to Play” version of the game.

Which brings me to three things that have turned me off to the game a bit:

Lack of content for “Freeps” (Free Players)

Monster “cheats”

Game/DM Cheats

I guess #1 works as a ploy to get people to subscribe to the game – Hey! I did! Mainly because as a freep, I only had access to about 1% of the quests/dungeons in “The Marketplace” (the zone you go to after your character gets up to ~level3-4 in order to get up to level 5-6.

#2 is where MOBs (particularly kobolds) tend to jump away from you until they’re up in the wall or ceiling, where you can’t target them, but they can target you. This seems to happen at least once in EVERY dungeon crawl I’ve been in, and it’s really annoying.

#3 is what I call “The Lazy DM.” I remember back in the PnP days (That’s “Pen and Paper”) where if a DM was bored and wanted to end the night’s gaming session he would just throw in something like a dragon or a mind flayer or some demon and say, “You’re all dead. Goodnight.”

DDO is slightly more round-about, but every time I run into an ooze I think “Lazy DM.” The reason being is because an ooze can wreck your weapons AND your armor in just one encounter – and oh hey, here come 50 kobolds to clean up – Yay! It’s the ultimate in lazy DM’ing, and poor (lazy) game design.

Other than those three points, I have been enjoying the game, but I’d be much more likely to continue my subscription if I didn’t have to deal with MOB bugs and lazy DM’s – I could even put up with the monthly subscription if those other problems were fixed.

BUT – since the game has been out for quite some time and those problems are still around, it’s VERY unlikely they’ll ever be addressed. Which translates to the conclusion that it’s just as unlikely that I will continue to subscribe to the game.

I’m already starting to get my EVE Online itch. So I’ll probably do a game switch around the end of the month, about the time my initial month of DDO time expires.